Did you miss the announcement of the 2017 Edgar Award nominees the other day? The Mystery Writers of America makes the announcement annually right around Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday. Congratulations to all the nominees.

Morgue: A Life in Death by Dr. Vincent DiMaio & Ron Franscell (St. Martin’s Press)The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder That Shocked Victorian England by Paul Thomas Murphy (Pegasus Books)While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent into Madness by Eli Sanders (Penguin Random House – Viking Books)The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale (Penguin Random House – Penguin Press)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd (Penguin Random House – Nan A. Talese)Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden Since 1967 by Mitzi M. Brunsdale (McFarland & Company)Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (W.W. Norton – Liveright)Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula by David J. Skal (W.W. Norton – Liveright)